How To Add a Loading Animation

to your WordPress Website

Waiting for something to load can be boring, especially on the web. Loading animation is a useful way to manage wait times for the user. So if you are looking for a WordPress solution to keep users happy while they wait, here are some of the cool methods for creating animations during page loading.

How to Add a Loading Animation to Your WordPress Site

Adding a loading animation is easier than you might think. There are a number of options on how to add one to a WordPress site. From easy to use plugins to add custom code to the site. Since there are so many different choices, I’ll list them here so you can take a look around and find which one works best for you.

Best WordPress Plugins Add a Loading Animation

A plugin is the easiest, most straightforward way to add an animation. These are especially helpful if you don’t feel comfortable messing with code or don’t have the time. Here is a list of some of the most versatile plugins for loadings. Some of these are free and others are premium. In some cases, the same plugin has a simpler free version and a more robust pro version.

Loftloader Loading Animation for WordPress

Loftloader has a free and a pro version. In the free version, you can try out a few of the preloaders and customize then to match the site and brand. Moreover, the pro version has more options and more granular controls.

Flat Preloader

Flat Preloader is a simple free plugin with a limited set of colorful loading animations. This plugin is perfect if you need a quick fix for a preloader and don’t need to customize the colors or the image.

Best Preloader

Best Preloader is a free one-option loading animation plugin that fits any website style. In addition, it comes with one animation with some customization controls.

Page Loader

Page Loader is a premium loading animation plugin with lots of customization and branding options. As a result, It’s one of the favorite preloader plugins on the market.

WP Smart Preloader

WP Smart Preloader is a free and open-source plugin with full customization options. The animations are not very elaborate but will match any style of the website. You can customize the colors and the settings quite easily.

Loading Animation Without a WordPress Plugin

If you want to avoid using a plugin, there are plenty of free and ready to use animations available. As well as some advance tutorials which provide the code snippets you need to add.

PixelBuddha with Multimedia

The guys at Multimedia published a simple tutorial with two free sets of loading animations from PixelBuddha and the code you need to set them up on your site.

CodePen For Loading Animations

This Medium article by UX Planet, the author rounds up a lot of loading animations in different styles. There are simple ones and more complex ones. Firstly, most of them are embedded from CodePen and you can get the HTML and CSS snippet from the widget itself. Moreover, you’ll need to insert these into a complete code set for an animation set up.

SpinKit

Tobias Ashlink has a SpinKit with a nice collection of loading animations with the code available through GitHub. These also need to be added to a full code set for a preloader set up.

Loading.io

Loading.io is a collection of loading animations with lots of different options. There are CSS preloaders, GIF preloaders, buttons and more. So, look through their site to find all the options and the instructions on how to add them to your site.

Pixelvars

Finally, The guys are Pixelvars wrote a handy tutorial with all the code you’ll need to set up your own loading animation. You can even use their code along with the CodePen or GitHub animations above. This option does seem a bit more advanced for some people. Go with this if you are a developer with good coding knowledge.